Re: [RFCv2][PATCH 1/7] fs: optimize inotify/fsnotify code for unwatched files

[Eric Paris]

On Wed, 2015-06-24 at 17:16 -0700, Dave Hansen wrote:
> From: Dave Hansen <dave.hansen@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> 
> I have a _tiny_ microbenchmark that sits in a loop and writes
> single bytes to a file.  Writing one byte to a tmpfs file is
> around 2x slower than reading one byte from a file, which is a
> _bit_ more than I expecte.  This is a dumb benchmark, but I think
> it's hard to deny that write() is a hot path and we should avoid
> unnecessary overhead there.
> 
> I did a 'perf record' of 30-second samples of read and write.
> The top item in a diffprofile is srcu_read_lock() from
> fsnotify().  There are active inotify fd's from systemd, but
> nothing is actually listening to the file or its part of
> the filesystem.
> 
> I *think* we can avoid taking the srcu_read_lock() for the
> common case where there are no actual marks on the file.
> This means that there will both be nothing to notify for
> *and* implies that there is no need for clearing the ignore
> mask.
> 
> This patch gave a 13.8% speedup in writes/second on my test,
> which is an improvement from the 10.8% that I saw with the
> last version.
> 
> Signed-off-by: Dave Hansen <dave.hansen@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Cc: Andrew Morton <akpm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Cc: Jan Kara <jack@xxxxxxx>
> Cc: Al Viro <viro@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Cc: Eric Paris <eparis@xxxxxxxxxx>
> Cc: John McCutchan <john@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Cc: Robert Love <rlove@xxxxxxxxx>
> Cc: Tim Chen <tim.c.chen@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Cc: Andi Kleen <ak@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Cc: linux-kernel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> ---
> 
>  b/fs/notify/fsnotify.c |   10 ++++++++++
>  1 file changed, 10 insertions(+)
> 
> diff -puN fs/notify/fsnotify.c~optimize-fsnotify fs/notify/fsnotify.c
> --- a/fs/notify/fsnotify.c~optimize-fsnotify	2015-06-24 
> 17:14:34.573109264 -0700
> +++ b/fs/notify/fsnotify.c	2015-06-24 17:14:34.576109399 -0700
> @@ -213,6 +213,16 @@ int fsnotify(struct inode *to_tell, __u3
>  	    !(test_mask & to_tell->i_fsnotify_mask) &&
>  	    !(mnt && test_mask & mnt->mnt_fsnotify_mask))
>  		return 0;
> +	/*
> +	 * Optimization: srcu_read_lock() has a memory barrier which 
> can
> +	 * be expensive.  It protects walking the *_fsnotify_marks 
> lists.
> +	 * However, if we do not walk the lists, we do not have to 
> do
> +	 * SRCU because we have no references to any objects and do 
> not
> +	 * need SRCU to keep them "alive".
> +	 */
> +	if (!to_tell->i_fsnotify_marks.first &&
> +	    (!mnt || !mnt->mnt_fsnotify_marks.first))
> +		return 0;

two useless peeps from the old peanut gallery of long lost....

1) should you actually move this check up before the IN_MODIFY check?
This seems like it would be by far the most common case, and you'd save
yourself a bunch of useless conditionals/bit operations.

2) do you want to use hlist_empty(&to_tell->i_fsnotify_marks) instead,
for readability (and they are static inline, so compiled code is the
same)

It is fine as it is. Don't know how much you want to try to bikeshed...

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